Why did the ancients prick chicken legs?
Yue Jueshu: "There is a chicken market outside Loumen, so the king of Wu raises chickens."
Chickens evolved from wild breeds into poultry. Archaeological findings have confirmed that chickens were raised in China as early as the middle of the Neolithic Age six or seven thousand years ago. How did the ancients raise chickens? Academic circles have found clues from the structure of the word "chicken".
At present, the word "chicken" is a simplified word. The traditional word "chicken" has two ways of writing, and the right side can be written as "bird" or "Wei". Why is this happening? It may be that the chicken tails domesticated by the early ancients were different in length. "Bird" and "Wei" are both birds, and the two words are homologous. The difference is the difference of the tail. Xu Shen's Shuo Wen Jie Zi in the Eastern Han Dynasty explained that Wei is "the general term for short tails of birds." This kind of short-tailed chicken is more like a hen.
On the left of the traditional chicken character is "Xi". The word "Xi" consists of "claw" and "overlapping". From Oracle Bone Inscriptions's point of view, "claw" is the shape of a hand, and "claw" is a female slave tied with a rope. From the analysis of this primitive glyph structure, the early ancients tied the chicken legs or necks with ropes and buckled them to raise them. In this way, the chicken will not fly. Over time, pheasants (pheasants) that can fly away become domestic chickens. This method of "tying chicken legs" is one of the most common chicken raising methods in ancient times.
The word "chicken" discovered by Oracle Bone Inscriptions has changed on the right, and the word "leash" has always been on the left.
By the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, it was very common for the ancients to raise chickens. Chapter 80 of Laozi's Tao Te Ching says, "Neighbors look at each other, and the voices of chickens and dogs hear each other." During this period, special chicken farms also appeared. "Yuejueshu" records: "There is a chicken market outside Loumen. Keep chickens and ask Li to maintain them and go to the county town for 20 miles." The "Hebei North Market" here is the Wu family's special chicken farm.
Later, free-range and captive breeding became the main ways of raising chickens in ancient times. Jin recorded in Miscellanies of Xijing that after Liu Bang proclaimed himself emperor, he took his father from his hometown in Fengxian County, Xuzhou to the capital Chang 'an, but his father was not used to it, so he built a new Fengcheng. Like his hometown, he also brought chickens raised in his hometown, which was called "Let dogs, sheep, chickens and ducks go to the children's land to compete for their homes". It can be seen that chickens have been raised since the early Western Han Dynasty.
The Han Dynasty actively encouraged farmers to raise livestock and poultry. According to the biography of Gong Sui in Han Dynasty, when Gong Sui, an official of Xuan Di, Emperor Gaozu of Han Dynasty, came to Tiqi, Shandong Province, he saw that the local area did not attach importance to agriculture and animal husbandry, and ordered every farmer to plant mulberry and leek, raise pigs and raise chickens, including 2 sows and 5 chickens. There were also professional chicken farmers in the Han Dynasty. According to Liu Xiang's Legend of Immortals, Luoyang people who lived at the foot of Beishan, a corpse town, wished a chicken Weng, "chickens have been raised for more than 100 years, and there are more than 1000 chickens." Some scholars believe that Zhu Jiong is the earliest professional chicken breeder in China.
Du Fu, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, once described his domestic chickens in his poem "Persuading Wen Zong to Build a Chicken Gate": "The slave killed the bamboo and blocked it. There is a gap on the east side of the wall, and a high fence can be built. " Because captive breeding is more conducive to environmental sanitation than free-range breeding, Du Fu asked his eldest son to repair the chicken pen to prevent chickens from flying around: "Put the cage inside, so you can't throw it in." A sparse room is bitter, but it is still dirty in the distance. "
The ancients scalded chickens and plucked their hair (the brick statue of Wei and Jin tombs in Jiayuguan, Gansu Province, painted)
In the "chicken fighting picture" in the Han Dynasty stone relief in Nanyang, Henan Province, two chickens stare with their heads held high, kick their legs and open their mouths, and their tail feathers are tilted, fighting each other.
What kind of chicken did the ancients like best?
Answer outside the ridge: "One chicken is straight, one silver is two"
In the pre-Qin period, the situation of raising chickens in various parts of China has been recorded. According to the article "The Japanese Family", Xiaguan and Qingzhou in the east, including southern Shandong and northern Jiangsu, "its livestock are suitable for chickens and dogs, and its valley is suitable for rice and wheat".
The ancients raised many kinds of chickens. "Qi Yao Min Shu" quoted Guang Zhi as saying: "There are three kinds of chickens: bearded chicken, five-fingered chicken, golden chicken and anti-winged chicken." In terms of popularity, how many kinds of chickens did the ancients like to raise-
One is a stork. According to the history of poultry raising in China, this kind of chicken is a famous cockfighting breed in ancient times, which was produced in Shandong. Er Ya said: "Chicken is the biggest, Shu is the biggest", "Chicken must be three feet for a stork". In this regard, the "Jin Guo Pu" notes: "The giant stork in Yanggou was a good chicken in ancient times." The Shu land mentioned here is in Shandong, not Sichuan. A place called Yanggou is the most famous stork.
The other is "Long song Chicken". This chicken is named because it is good at crowing. It tells the time very accurately and crows are very long. "Qi Yaomin raises chickens in Shu" is quoted from the Han Dynasty and said, "Wuzhong gives a chicken, and its crow is twice as long as that of ordinary chickens." The ancients kept it as a bird to tell the time. There are long-tailed chickens in many places in China. "Old Man's Righteousness" said: "There is a chicken in Runan (now Henan)." According to Song Fan Chengda's "Gui Yu Hai Zhi Heng": "Long-lived chicken, a tall and common chicken, crows all day long and was born in the cave of Tanzhou River (now Nanning)." Changming chicken is the most famous chicken in Vietnam today.
Vietnam Changming Chicken is also known as "Chao Chicken" and "Changming Chicken produced in Jiuzhen County". "Nine Towns and Counties" was established by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty in six years, and it is located in the territory of Qinghua, Vietnam today. This kind of chicken is also mentioned in the geographical records compiled by Chen Gu and Wang Ye in the Southern Dynasties: "There is a chicken in Shifeng County, which is long and clear, and it is called Chaoji if it blows the horn at every tide." Shifeng County was under the jurisdiction of Annan in the Tang Dynasty, and it is also in the territory of Qinghua in Vietnam today. Vietnam Changming Chicken was presented to the Central Plains in the Western Han Dynasty. According to Xijing Miscellanies: "When I became the emperor, more and more Chang Ming chickens were offered in Jiaodi (Vietnam). If you wait for the chicken in the morning, you will miss it. Long-lived chickens are inexhaustible, and they are good at fighting far away. "
Among the chickens that are good at crowing, the golden-footed white chicken is also famous. The Literary and Art Newspaper edited by Ou Yangxun in the Tang Dynasty quoted Guang Zhi as saying: "A man with a golden rooster and a golden beard is good at fighting, which is given by the state." Bingzhou is one of the ancient Kyushu, and Taiyuan in Shanxi now belongs to Bingzhou.
The price of Changming chicken is much higher than that of ordinary chicken. The article "Long-lived Chicken" in Zhou Qufei's "Answering the Beasts Outside the Ridge" in the Southern Song Dynasty said: "Long-lived chicken goes out of Nanzhao, one chicken is straight, one silver is two. The shape is short and big, the feathers are shiny, and the voice is round and long. " Long song chicken is not only good at crowing, but also aggressive, so the ancients also raised it as a cockfight.
Among the precious chickens raised by the ancients, there is also a kind of "long-tailed chicken", which is an ornamental rare bird that the ancient royal family likes to raise. Long-tailed chicken originated in a place called Chicken Forest in North Korea and paid tribute to the Central Plains in the Han Dynasty. "Biography of the Eastern Han Dynasty" records: "Mahan has a long-tailed chicken with a tail five feet long." Stone statues of long-tailed chicken and pottery figurines of fighting chicken were unearthed in Tianhui Han Tomb in Chengdu. Unfortunately, the long-tailed chicken is extinct.
In addition, black-bone chicken is also a modern precious variety, and it is also a kind of chicken that the ancients like to raise. Unlike storks, long-tailed chickens and long-tailed chickens, black-bone chickens are favored by roosters, and hens are the best, especially a white-haired black-bone chicken. Black-bone chicken has high medicinal and edible value and is favored by Chinese medicine. Compendium of Materia Medica and Poultry Department says: "People with black hair and bones, people with black hair and bones, people with black hair and bones, but people with black tongue are all flesh and blood, so it is better to use medicine." The traditional Chinese medicine "Wuji Baifeng Pill" was invented by the ancients. It was quite common for the ancients to raise black-bone chickens. In order to cure his senile rheumatism, Du Fu, a poet in the Tang Dynasty, kept black-bone chickens at home: "The more the wind spreads, the more eggs you eat."
Why did the ancients prefer to keep cocks?
Ode to Cockfighting: "Sitting on a long banquet, cockfighting smells all over the house."
In the Song Dynasty, farmers raised chickens to raise cockfighting (Chongqing Dazu Stone Carving).
According to historical records, the most typical use of chickens is telling time and fighting cocks, which hens do not have. Cockfighting, also known as "chicken fighting", has a long history. According to Liezi Huangdi, "Ji Xunzi raised cockfighting. 10 He asked: Will chickens fight? " After 40 days of training, these chickens "look like wooden chickens", and other chickens are afraid to fight, so the idiom "stupefied" comes into being.
Various tricks of cockfighting appeared in the pre-Qin period. "Twenty-five Years of Zuo Gong" records: Ji and Zhai fought chicken, Ji put a layer of epithelial armor on his chicken and Zhai put metal claws on his chicken. Some even cheat in secret, for example, chickens are afraid of weasels (raccoons), and some people daub weasels' oil to make their opponents timid. "A piece of Zhuangzi" said: "The chickens in the sheep ditch ... However, those who beat people by numbers paint their heads with raccoon cream."
In the Qin and Han Dynasties, cockfighting activities became more active. Biography of Historical Records of Huo Zhi records: "Bo Xi gallops, fighting cocks and running dogs". Liu Bang's father loves to play cockfighting, and Xijing Miscellanies calls him: "Cockfighting is fun." At that time, rich people spent a lot of money to raise aggressive cocks. "Miscellanies of Xijing" also pointed out that Liu Yu, the Duke of Lu in the early Han Dynasty, liked fighting cocks, ducks, geese and wild geese, and also raised other rare birds and animals, which cost "2,000 stones", equivalent to a year's salary at that time.
The custom of cockfighting was popular in ancient times for a long time. Cao Zhi wrote a poem "Ode to Cockfighting" for this purpose, describing the situation of cockfighting and watching cockfighting in that year: "Sitting on the stage for a long banquet, cockfighting smells all over the house; The wolves are falling and its wings are flying ... "
Cockfighting was more popular in the Tang Dynasty, and Li Longji, Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, also liked cockfighting. According to Chen Hongzu's biography of the old father in Dongcheng, when Xuanzong was an official, he enjoyed the folk cockfighting in Tomb-Sweeping Day and acceded to the throne. He set up a chicken farm between the two palaces, and raised thousands of Chang 'an cocks in the chicken farm, including golden hair, golden distance, high crown and high tail, and selected 500 children from the Sixth Army to train and teach them to raise. "Because the emperor likes it, everyone follows suit." Kings, aristocratic families, consorts, princesses, Hou families go bankrupt, and city chickens pay the bill. "In addition to the powerful, ordinary people also like cockfighting:" Men and women in cities make chickens, and the poor make fake chickens. "In the Tang Dynasty, cockfighting was also promoted to the army as a military training method. People thought that cockfighting could inspire soldiers' fighting spirit.
Because cockfighting flourished, ancient cocks were naturally more favored than modern ones and more valuable than hens. For example, in Luoyang, the eastern capital of the Tang Dynasty, people in previous dynasties liked cockfighting, and each family kept thirty or fifty cocks. Cocks are much more expensive than hens, and only one cockfight can be exchanged for some acres of land.
Finally, in ancient times, no matter in cities or villages, every family kept a rooster. In addition to morning crowing and mating, the ancients also believed that roosters could ward off evil spirits.